My friend was a widow, not really old but already a widow twice.

You think of Oscar Wilde’s wisecrack. To lose one husband may be regarded as a misfortune, to lose two looks like carelessness.

But really, it wasn’t funny. Nothing about it was funny. Audra had told (women) friends that Thad, the second husband, had saved her life, virtually—she’d met him within a year of losing her first husband, to whom she’d been married for thirty-six years. Which was why I’d been avoiding my widow-friend through the entire pandemic.

Audra had…